Autonym of Mosopeleas-Ouesperies-Ofos

[Rory M Larson]

> For me at any rate, it's 'way too late to try to second guess the Tunicas
on why they adopted the chunk they did.  Since truncation usually comes off
the right-hand side of the name, I assume the Ofos had already lost the
initial labial (Swanton's progression of names down the Ohio and
Mississippi confirms this, and the same loss in Biloxi suggests it was very
early).  I strongly doubt that any non-OVS language lost initial labial
sonorants spontaneously, so, to me it all pretty strongly supports
identification of Swanton's ethnonyms and Tunica ushpi with the Ofos.

I'm not following this argument, or quite where it's directed.  First, if
loss of the initial labial /m/ is a single event in Ofo-Biloxi, and if
Mosopelea is the ancestral name of the Ofo, then the 17th century Mosopelea
would have to be ancestral to the Biloxi as well.

Second, I don't see why we are assuming that Ofo-ic speakers were an ethnic
singularity at this time.  Swanton's account makes it clear that the Uspe
and the Ofo-gula were two separate groups in the period from 1699 to 1722.
The Ofo-gula can certainly be identified with the Ofo as represented
linguistically by Rosa Pierrette.  The Tunica knew her group as the Ushpi,
which can equally certainly be identified with the Uspe.  Either name could
be derived from Mosopelea, but not both at once.

Under the circumstances, I think the Uspe are the better choice.  Swanton
gives the vowels in the Tunica version as long, with the first being
circumflex: Uus^pii.  The various French versions given are Ouispe
(/wispe/), Oussipe's (/usipee/), Ounspie (/uNspii/), and Onspe'e (oNspee).
We could reasonably reconstruct this as something like *woNs8pee ~
*wuNs8pii.  In an earlier posting (May 4, 2004), Michael McCafferty has
stated that the first record of the Mosopelea name was on Marquette's map
of the Mississippi of 1673, in which it was written MONS8PELEA, with the
initial vowel nasalized and the second (I think) schwa.  So if we drop the
final (ethnonymic?) -a, consider the initial m to be a tight w before a
nasal vowel, and guess that the l was a light rhotic or y to separate the
two e syllables, we are essentially there: *moNs8pe(l)e ~ *woNs8pee.

This does not mean that Ofo cannot be cognate to Moso-.  Given that the
Tunica knew Rosa Pierrette's Ofo group as Uus^pii, the Ofo and the Uspe
must have been the same kind of people to them.  It seems quite plausible
that multiple groups of Ofo-ic speakers existed prior to the 17th century.
They may have had a common ethnonym, and that ethnonym may have been
something like *moso or *woNso.  In fact, this might have been the ethnonym
for the entire OVS group.  If Ofo-gula and Uspe represented separate OVS
dialects, and the Uspe/Mosopelea had just recently moved in from Ohio, then
Ofo is very likely more closely related to Biloxi than to the original
Mosopelea/Uspe tongue.

Could you remind me again: in OVS, what is the relationship tree of Tutelo,
Ofo and Biloxi?  Any sense on the time depth?

Rory
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